Monday, March 06, 2017

Fun Book, but the Setting

I mentioned on Twitter I found a DC area set modern day retelling of "Much Ado About Nothing" set in DC and was going to read it. The book is Carla De Guzman's We Go Together, and as a retelling, it's super fun. I enjoyed it. It had been on sale when I bought it, but it looks like it's $1.99 now, , so a great deal for a sweet retelling with fun characters. Hiro and Claudia have gender swapped names, but for those familiar with the source material, the roles themselves are not gender swapped.

I do however have nitpicky DC area thoughts: 1. These folks are all secretly rich, living in Old Town Alexandria, and an and having an M Street storefront in Georgetown. 2. They have terrible taste in cupcakes. 3. Ben runs into the middle of M Street at which point I assume he was run over by a cab and existed through the rest of the book as a ghost. The other characters never make fun of him for being a ghost. 4. It's Washington Monument not Washington Memorial, but I actually think it's meant to be the Jefferson Memorial since they are near the cherry blossom trees. (There's no other setting description in that scene, no description of the memorial, the tidal basin or anything else to orient it so it's hard to say. There are trees nearish the Monument, and also the FDR Memorial.) 5. People who have store fronts in Georgetown, do not get to call "DuPont" the ritzy side of town. 6. These people find parking instantly. In Georgetown. In front of museums. On a Sunday. In spring. 7. There's a few great mentions of the National Gallery and yet, in one scene the implication (as one of the characters is in Paris) seems to be that the National Gallery has only American artists, even though in another scene there's reference to non-American artists. (I mentioned this was nitpicky, right?)

8. They keep going into the Library of Congress and getting shushed. There is no mention of where in the Library of Congress, there are reading rooms where you likely would be shushed, but there's also huge segments that are exhibitions, or conference rooms, so it feels a bit stuck in.

Again, I enjoyed it. But the DC stuff is something I have warned fellow locals about.